Après la disparition de sa mère, morte en le mettant au monde, Olivier Twist est placé et élevé dans un orphelinat. Il devient vite le souffre-douleur du cruel bedeau Bumble qui pour s'en débarrasser, le place comme apprenti chez un fabricant de cercueils. Maltraité, Olivier s'enfuit à Londres où il est enrôlé dans une bande d'enfants-voleurs dirigé par Fagin, un homme redoutable...

OLIVER TWIST

Le narrateur du roman est David Copperfield qui, une fois adulte, nous raconte l'histoire de sa jeunesse. Jeune garçon, il mène une existence heureuse avec sa mère et sa nourrice, Peggotty, puisque son père est mort avant sa naissance.

David Copperfield - Tome I

L'action du roman concerne un ancien meurtre perpetre dans une petite ville non loin de Londres, sur quoi se greffent, quelque vingt-cinq ans apres, les emeutes anti-catholiques dites Gordon Riots, conduites par Lord George Gordon, qui, du 2 au 10 juin 1780 a Londres, ont provoque de tres importants degats et fait de nombreuses victimes.

Barnabé Rudge: Tome II

Compiled by Charles Dickens, Mugby Junction is an intriguing composite of tales containing one of Dickens’ most celebrated ghost stories, The Signalman, as well as short stories by Charles Collins, Hesbah Stretton, Andrew Halliday, and Amelia Edwards. Arriving at Mugby Junction in an attempt to escape his unhappy past, Barbox Brothers befriends a workman and his invalid daughter. With their help, he sets his sights on discovering which of the seven lines of the junction will most aid him in his journey of escape. In exploring one such line, he meets “the woman he had lost,” only to return to Mugby Junction once this has played out. Staying there, and continuing his friendship with the workman and his daughter, he collects the myriad stories he hears tell of at the junction. Charles Dickens is one of England’s most important literary figures.

L'Embranchement de Mugby

I have been looking on, this evening, at a merry company of children assembled round that pretty German toy, a Christmas Tree. The tree was planted in the middle of a great round table, and towered high above their heads. It was brilliantly lighted by a multitude of little tapers; and everywhere sparkled and glittered with bright objects. There were rosy-cheeked dolls, hiding behind the green leaves; and there were real watches (with movable hands, at least, and an endless capacity of being wound up) dangling from innumerable twigs; there were French-polished tables, chairs, bedsteads, wardrobes, eight-day clocks, and various other articles of domestic furniture (wonderfully made, in tin, at Wolverhampton), perched among the boughs, as if in preparation for some fairy housekeeping; there were jolly, broad-faced little men, much more agreeable in appearance than many real men-and no wonder, for their heads took off, and showed them to be full of sugar-plums; there were fiddles and drums; there were tambourines, books, work-boxes, paint-boxes, sweetmeat-boxes, peep-show boxes, and all kinds of boxes; there were trinkets for the elder girls, far brighter than any grown-up gold and jewels; there were baskets and pincushions in all devices; there were guns, swords, and banners; there were witches standing in enchanted rings of pasteboard, to tell fortunes; there were teetotums, humming-tops, needle-cases, pen-wipers, smelling-bottles, conversation-cards, bouquet-holders; real fruit, made artificially dazzling with gold leaf; imitation apples, pears, and walnuts, crammed with surprises; in short, as a pretty child, before me, delightedly whispered to another pretty child, her bosom friend, "There was everything, and more." This motley collection of odd objects, clustering on the tree like magic fruit, and flashing back the bright looks directed towards it from every side-some of the diamond-eyes admiring it were hardly on a level with the table, and a few were languishing in timid wonder on the bosoms of pretty mothers, aunts, and nurses-made a lively realisation of the fancies of childhood; and set me thinking how all the trees that grow and all the things that come into existence on the earth, have their wild adornments at that well-remembered time.

Some Christmas Stories

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Barnabé Rudge - Tome II

When Barnaby and his mother are harassed by a mysterious stranger, they flee to the capital, where they unwittingly become embroiled in an anti-Catholic protest that quickly becomes political. Swept up by events, Barnaby is imprisoned, rescued, betrayed, and sentenced to die. Barnaby Rudge was Charles Dickens's first historical novel. It was published serially starting in 1840 in Master Humphrey's Clock, a weekly magazine written and edited by Dickens. The story takes place against the backdrop of the Gordon Riots, the most destructive social unrest in London in the eighteenth century. HarperPerennial Classics brings great works of literature to life in digital format, upholding the highest standards in ebook production and celebrating reading in all its forms. Look for more titles in the HarperPerennial Classics collection to build your digital library.

Barnaby Rudge

Olivier Twist (1838) est un feuilleton criminel d’une noirceur concentrée.Un angélique orphelin échappe aux sévices que les institutions charitables de l’Angleterre victorienne réservent aux enfants abandonnés pour tomber dans les plus fangeux cloaques des bas-fonds londoniens. L’apprentissage précoce du vice et du crime y est de règle pour échapper à la misère et à la faim. On n’oubliera guère, après les avoir croisés, ni l’abominable Bumble ni le ténébreux Fagin, cette saisissante préfiguration des gibiers de bagne qui hanteront Les Misérables de Victor Hugo.Créations de l’imaginaire ? Ombres portées des terreurs et des cauchemars de l’enfance ? Peut-être. Toujours est-il que les contemporains y virent le reflet de la réalité.« Il n’y a pas tant de différence entre ce noir tableau de l’enfance et le tableau de l’usine par Karl Marx », remarque d’ailleurs le philosophe Alain.Il faut s’en souvenir à chaque page en découvrant Les Aventures d’Olivier Twist.

Les Aventures d'Oliver Twist

"Pendant quelque temps après sa naissance, la question de savoir s'il vivrait assez longtemps pour porter un nom quelconque fut impossible à trancher. Sans aller jusqu'à dire que c'est une chance inouïe de naître dans un hospice, il faut reconnaître que c'est ce qui pouvait arriver de mieux à Oliver Twist." Un grand classique de la littérature, magnifiquement illustré !

OLIVER TWIST

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